tripadvisor

Apple is switching the default provider of its web searches from Siri, Search inside iOS (formerly called Spotlight) and Spotlight on the Mac. So, for instance, if Siri falls back to a web search on iOS when you ask it a question, you’re now going to get Google results instead of Bing. Updated below with a statement from Microsoft.
Consistency is Apple’s main motivation given… Read More

Oh you thought location-based food deal services were done and dusted! Eatigo, a discount restaurant booking service that bills itself as the anti-Groupon, would have you believe otherwise. The startup has closed new funding to the tune of over $10 million from travel giant TripAdvisor to expand its service across Southeast Asia. Read More

New York-based Citymaps, a social mapping application backed by $12 million in venture funding, has been acquired by TripAdvisor, the companies have announced. The service, which serves both as a mapping and navigational tool as well as a travel guide of sorts, will continue on as a standalone business at TripAdvisor, following the deal’s close.
Deal terms were not disclosed.
Co-founded… Read More

It’s 4th of July weekend, and if you’re not off traveling somewhere, hopefully you’re taking a summer trip soon. From Kayak to TripAdvisor, there are plenty of apps that want to help you maximize your vacation planning. We’ve found some others that are worth a mention, too. TechCrunch tested out dozens of travel apps; these are our favorites right now.
Hopper
Sometimes… Read More

Sometimes, there can be a little too much disruption. So goes the thesis of Joost Schreve, the former head of mobile for TripAdvisor, who left the company last November and started his own startup, KimKim, in December.
The nascent company — seed-funded with $1 million from investors, including NFX Guild — is catering to the presumably many people who no long want… Read More

There’s no way to put this gently, so here it goes: The rapid advancement in digital technology is transforming the cozy world of travel retail into an all-out war for customers. And that’s a good thing for you and me as travelers, because it will ultimately mean more selection, better customization and, potentially, lower prices. Read More

TripAdvisor, the travel planning and booking business, today announced the acquisition of a startup that it hopes will help build out its relationship with customers during and after their travels: it has bought ZeTrip and its “automatic” travel journal app Rove, which provides a travelog of your movements based on your GPS coordinates and other data. Terms of the deal were… Read More

European restaurant reservation service LaFourchette — the so-called OpenTable of France — has entered into agreement to be acquired by NASDAQ-listed travel site TripAdvisor, with whom it already had a partnership. Read More

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TripAdvisor puts a nice notch in its belt today with a Bing integration deal that places its results front and center on search results pages. The deal marks the first time that TripAdvisor has lent its metasearch data, gathered from over 125M reviews across 3.1M locations, to a search engine.
In conjunction with the new Bing integration, TripAdvisor is also launching a new Windows 8.1 app… Read More

Four Indians are exposing India’s sexual harassment hotspots via Safecity, a website for victims to anonymously report when and where they were abused. The founders hope that it could be the first step to address the cultural stigma of reporting assaults. Read More

Travel portal TripAdvisor continues to push ahead with its mobile and social acquisitions: today the company announced that it has acquired GateGuru, a mobile app that provides real-time information on airports, weather, and flights. Much of that is picked up from crowdsourcing, not unlike Waze — acquired by Google last week — does with road travel. Terms of the deal between… Read More

TripAdvisor already has more than 100 million reviews on its sites, but it needs even more in order to continue competing against rivals like Yelp and Foursquare. Review Express, a service the travel Web site launched today, is meant to help TripAdvisor grow its roster of reviews by making it easy for venues to request them from customers. Read More

TripAdvisor, the travel site built around destination guides and user reviews, today made another acquisition: it has bought Tiny Post, an iOS app that lets users take pictures, write captions over them, and then share them with people on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it looks like this was both an acqui-hire as well as a product acquisition. Read More

Locu, a local business data provider which extracts structured data from business websites and then makes it available via an API, is today announcing two major new partnerships, specifically for its restaurant data: CitySearch and TripAdvisor. The news comes only a couple of months after OpenTable signed with Locu on a similar deal. Read More

TripAdvisor, a site that offers free guides and reviews for various traveling adventures, has just acquired Wanderfly.
TripAdvisor has been slowly but surely integrating more social layers to its platform, with Friend of Friend reviews and a Local Picks Facebook app for restaurants. But the company’s acquisition of Wanderfly is taking that social integration to the next level. Read More

Tourists rave about a city’s well-known restaurants and distort their review averages. So today travel site TripAdvisor starts highlighting beloved eateries from people who live nearby in Local Picks, a Facebook app it’s relaunching. Originally released in 2007 but shut down from 2010 until now, Local Picks pulls in reviews of 850,000 restaurants from TripAdvisor, re-sorts them to… Read More

Paralysis can set in quickly when you’re faced with the infinitude of products and reviews on sprawling sites like Amazon or Yelp. To help you find your way, TripAdvisor has just begun showing reviews by Facebook friends of friends atop results. The site already featured tips from friends, but with 60 million reviews on the site, surfacing content from friends of friends (FoF) means… Read More

On the heels of last week’s announcement of “social” hostel booking site InBed.me picking up a $1.2m seed round, another social travel site is launching today: Tripbirds, which lets users pick up travel recommendations from friends via other social networks, is now open for business after a private beta period that saw 4,000 sign-ups and 13 million check-ins and images… Read More

After spinning off from Expedia and debuting on the NASDAQ in December, trip reviews site TripAdvisor posted fourth quarter 2011 revenues of $137.8 million, a 30% increase over fourth quarter 2010. Full year 2011 revenues were $637.1 million, a 31% increase over full year 2010. Fourth quarter 2011 GAAP earnings per share ) was $0.16 per diluted share compared to $0.14 for the fourth quarter 2010. Read More